Gas giant planets form in protoplanetary disks through two main processes: core accretion followed by runaway gas accretion, or gravitational instability followed by fragmentation. However, T Tauri stars with gravitationally unstable protoplanetary disks have not been reported so far. Recently, there have been reports of exceptionally massive disks around two T Tauri stars. These two disks are expected to exhibit gravitational instability. While dust continuum images of these two disks at radio wavelengths do show some subtle asymmetries, it’s not yet clear whether these gas disks are associated with the spiral structures that numerical simulations commonly predict. In light of this, we propose conducting SCExAO/CHARIS+NIR-WFS K-band observations of these two T Tauri stars. Our primary objective is to investigate whether these disks are indeed associated with gravitationally unstable disks by searching for the presence of spiral structures. If successful, these two stars will be the first T Tauri stars known to be associated with gravitationally unstable disks. Conversely, even if we do not detect spiral structures, our observations will still provide valuable information regarding the lower disk-to-star mass ratio, which could indicate that these disks are gravitationally stable.
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